


Unsaid

by ZadieWrites



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: A gun is in this fic it is not used but it is referenced heavily, Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Modern AU, Smoking, These two broken bitches unloading shit onto each other in the club tonight, Trauma, Uther Pendragon's A+ Parenting (Merlin), a character is pressured into revealing their history of sexual abuse in this fic, and feeling really awkward about it, how obvious is it that I’m just like really salty about that scene in beauty and the beast part 2, if that is something that triggers you, that’s basically it, this is a weird fic of mine but I kinda like it, tw: guns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:07:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZadieWrites/pseuds/ZadieWrites
Summary: Morgana hasn’t seen her father in years, and neither have any idea how to communicate with one another. They both end up telling the other more than they intended over cigarettes.
Relationships: Morgana & Uther Pendragon (Merlin)
Kudos: 8





	Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t even know how this came to me but I was told I should publish it so here it is.

For a while, the two sat in silence. 

Morgana lit a cigarette and offered one to her father. 

“When did you start smoking?” He asked her.

“Since . . . a year before I left your house.” She admitted. 

“And I didn’t know?” 

The two had spoken very minimally since Morgana had emancipated at seventeen. A phone call every Christmas maybe. Other than that, . . . not much. And now she had agreed to meet him in person for the first time in years. In his car. 

“There’s a lot I did back then that you didn’t know about.” 

He stared at her for a moment, before deciding not to think on it too hard, with a shrug of his broad shoulders. 

“Does any of it compare to adopting a child?” Uther asked her. 

“. . . I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about that. I was afraid of what you’d say.” confessed Morgana.

“. . . does the child make you happy?” 

She paused. 

“He does.” 

“Did you think I would not support you?” 

“Whether you supported me or not, I didn’t want you to try and manage any part of me raising him. You’re a control freak, Dad, and you always have been.” 

“I helped you emancipate because I recognized forcing you to stay wouldn’t help! I have not controlled your life.”

“Right, you just made it miserable.”

“That’s an exaggeration, you’re _fine_.” 

“In spite of you! I’m fine because I overcame you and my childhood, not because of anything you did!” Morgana snapped.

There was yet another pause between them, tension hanging in the air like a tightrope. Neither of them were happy this had devolved into them yelling at each other again, as if she was still a teenager so quickly. 

She sighed and leaned her head against the seat, holding the cigarette out of the car window for a moment. 

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea. Meeting you here.” Morgana said, quietly. 

“. . . I’m glad. By the way. That you’re fine.”

She scoffed, softly. 

“I know it doesn’t mean anything to you, but it’s . . . I appreciate seeing that you’re okay.” 

“Don’t say that as if you don’t know why it doesn’t mean anything to me. Because when you do that it feels like you’re trying to manipulate me. Which you’ve already done a lot of. I can’t trust the things you say. More accurately, I can’t trust that the things you say are being said for the right reasons.” Morgana kept her voice calm as she rattled off her justification for being cautious around her father.

“I wasn’t trying to manipulate you, Morgana.” 

In truth it was rare that he was this honest. She still didn’t trust it, but it was at least an improvement. Ordinarily Morgana’s words would have escalated the argument, probably taking it into the realm of a shouting match. 

Because this conversation was different than the others in one respect; neither of them wanted this. Neither of them wanted to start an argument. Partly because Morgana’s plane ticket hadn’t been cheap but also because they’d been through all of this before. He didn’t fully understand the broadness of his own mistakes, how deep they’d cut, how damaged his daughter really was because of him, but he at least knew he’d made some. 

And Morgana was willing to defend herself more. She wasn’t dependent on him for anything, she’d been to therapy since she left . . . advised by those legally affiliated in her emancipation. Which meant she understood her situation better than he did. 

Searching for a change of subject she let herself ask, “How’s Arthur? I haven’t heard from him lately.” 

“I’m afraid I don’t know a lot more than you do. After he left home, he decided to embark on some ridiculous road trip and I don’t hear from him often.” you could hear the slight disappointment in Uther’s words. 

“You wanted him to go to college, didn’t you?” 

“I spent years making sure he’d be able to get into whatever college he wanted and he decides he actually _wants_ to live in a van. You wouldn’t let me help you with college.” he pointed out. 

“Because I didn’t go through what I did, to leave your home a year earlier than I was supposed to, to feel like I owed you anything. Ever. Besides, I wanted to achieve my goals on my own merit, without it having anything to do with your name, or the wealth associated with it.” 

“. . . I can understand that. Are you doing what you wanted to do? With the . . . computers you always had a way with?” 

“I am. I understand them better than people.” she confessed.

Great. Now she was being open to him. The voice of her own trust issues told her not to reveal so much about her emotional state, and she felt it would be wise to listen to it, as in her experience, these things were often used against her later by her father, during their next argument, or worse, in a court of law. 

“I’m glad.” was all he replied. 

“If you can support me, can’t you support Arthur?” 

“There’s a significant difference between you becoming a computer programmer instead of a lawyer, and my son letting himself become homeless because he has wanderlust from the road trip _you_ took him on without my consent when he was sixteen.” 

“When you threatened to press charges for kidnapping against me?” 

“I didn’t know what else to do, you took him across the country and since you emancipated, he was all I had left!” 

Regret at his own emotional outburst was reflected in her father’s eyes as she stared at him for a moment. 

“I know . . . I’ve told you I’m sorry about that. But it’d be nice if you wouldn’t jerk the system’s dick so much.” she stated, putting out the cigarette on the side of the car. 

His gaze flattened a bit at her vulgar wording but said nothing. 

“I’m sorry this has been so difficult for us.” acknowledged Uther. 

“I don’t know what else I expected from you and I in all honesty. We just can’t have a conversation together or even be in the same room and that’s how it always will be. Fuck, Dad, I wish it was different. I wish I could forgive you for suppressing me so much growing up, for lying to me about my parentage, for all of it, but I can’t because you can’t understand what it’s like for me, and I can’t believe any apology you have to offer is genuine because you’ve given me so many insincere apologies and made so many broken promises. And as long as you can’t understand me and as long as I can’t forgive you, we can never have a relationship.” Morgana cursed inwardly as she felt her eyes sting.

“. . . do you think it’s better if we don’t?” he questioned in response. 

Morgana appreciated that he didn’t pretend that he could understand her. He was too much of a pathological narcissist to do the amount of self reflecting that would require. 

“I don’t know. We keep trying to see each other anyway so some foolish part of us must miss each other.” 

That probably hit too close to home, she realized, as another wave of silence crashed over the two of them. 

“I have missed you.” he said, plainly. 

“You never call me.” 

“Would you pick up?” 

“. . . no. Probably not. Do you just miss me because you don’t have anyone else to care about?” 

“. . . I don’t . . . trust people. Enough to have them in my life.” 

“I know that. If I must confess, I’m surprised you know that. But if we’re talking about trust issues, imagine how it is for me.” 

“You already know I can’t.” 

“Ah. So you have been giving our situation more thought since the last time we talked. Was that on purpose?” 

“I regret causing you pain. I wasn’t a good father to you.”

Yet another pause punctuated that statement.

“. . . you can’t just say that.” 

“I want you to know that. I never wanted to give you and Arthur the same problems my father gave me.” 

“. . . are you _fucking_ dying, Uther?” Morgana had grown a habit, from when she was a teenager, of calling her father by his first name, to signify she no longer wanted to consider herself his child. 

She didn’t always do it, these days. But it was a good way to reassess the boundary in a conversation. A reminder that they weren’t close. 

“No-” he assured her before concluding, “Well, not that I know of.”

“Well, I am very confused, given the fact that from my perspective, you have worked very hard to build an identity around your constant refusal to admit to your mistakes! You told me you haven’t controlled my life!” 

“I wouldn’t say that I have but I should . . . give you more credit. I shouldn’t have made a habit of lying to you when you were growing up. After lying to you about your mother and I, it made . . . made it very easy.” 

“. . . So where are we supposed to go from here? Because part of me is always going to hate you.” 

“I don’t know the answer to that question, if we don’t go anywhere from here, that’s . . . fine. I felt I should tell you that in case this is the last time we speak to one another.” 

She stared out of the windshield, at the park ahead of them and felt that sting in her eyes again. 

“Dammit . . .” she whispered.

She didn’t want to cry in front of her father again. 

“You were planning on this being that, weren’t you? The last time?” asked Morgana, her voice, the ugly traitor it was, cracking on her.

“Were you not?” 

Yet another silence. She tried to light another cigarette but her damn lighter was dead. 

“Do you have a lighter in this car?” she sighed. 

“There should be one in the glove compartment.”

After she clicked open the box he interrupted her with, “Wait, let me-”

And then she saw it.

In the back of the glovebox was the black, plastic shape of what was unmistakably a gun. Specifically a pistol. 

There was a lighter in there as well, but she paid it no mind after that. She slammed the box shut and looked at her father, incredulously. 

“Dad,” she opened, calmly.

He sighed, bringing his head to his hand, as he realized what she had seen. 

“ _WHY_ in the name of _FUCK_ is there a gun in your car?!” Morgana demanded. 

“Morgana-” he started. 

“You know that’s illegal, right?! You can’t just have it sitting there, it’s not even covered up! What the fuck?! Is it loaded?!” 

“I- well, yes-”

“Why?! That’s really my biggest question, just why?!” 

“I . . . can’t tell you that.” he answered.

“What, are you a drug pusher now? Have you been robbed?!” 

“Worse, but I can’t tell you.” 

“Is this to get back on me for not telling you about the adoption thing?” 

“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous.” he scoffed. 

“You’re going to get arrested with this thing, at least tell me so I can see if I can help you hide it or something-” 

“It’s strongly personal.” 

“I’m your daughter.”

“That’s actually the problem.” 

“How bad could it possibly be-”

“I was sexually assaulted, is that what you want to hear?” 

Ah. There was that pause again. 

Morgana just stared for a long while. His shoulders were slumped around him and he wasn’t looking at her. For the first time he . . . looked his age. 

“W-what?” she breathed, voicelessly. 

“I was briefly seeing someone and she . . . drugged me. That’s why there’s a loaded handgun in my car.” 

“Holy fuck, Dad, I’m . . . Holy fuck. I’m so sorry.” 

“I didn’t want you or really anyone to know, but you especially.” 

“. . . when was this?” 

“A year or so before Arthur moved out.” 

“Arthur was around during this?” she choked. 

“He doesn’t know. He knows about her. But he doesn’t know why . . . I stopped seeing her.” he was visibly struggling to get through the words. 

“You . . . don’t have to talk about it. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to . . . pressure you into telling me.” 

“Could you . . . forget I told you that?” 

“If you want me to.” 

But she couldn’t, really. 

“Did you . . . press charges?” she questioned. 

“You and I both know that would be a waste of time.” 

She glanced down. They certainly hadn’t planned on unloading anything onto one another today. As far as emotional openness went for the two of them, this had to be some sort of record. Which felt brutal. She knew he didn’t owe her that explanation, and she hadn’t wanted to push him into giving one. 

Morgana and Uther were not careful with one another. And they were both traumatized and angry and hurting, and they both had similar responses to being traumatized. They couldn’t guarantee that they would improve their relationship at all. For all they knew they’d both grow so uncomfortable with letting themselves be known to one another that Uther’s prediction would come true and they really would never speak again. 

But more likely, they’d call each other next Christmas. And it would be obligatory and uncomfortable as usual. They’d give each other half-updates on each other’s life, being careful not to reveal too much again so as to avoid the situation they’d gotten themselves in today. Maybe Morgana would start giving updates on her son’s growth, knowing her father would never come into contact with him. 

Now that Arthur wasn’t living with Uther, that link between them was gone. They had no reason to remain in contact at all. Though for whatever reason, they likely wouldn’t cut each other off completely. 

Because humans are stupid. And Pendragons are some of the most stupid humans alive, she thought, as she headed back to the airport that day.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, as always, I do hope you liked this angsty thing of mine.


End file.
